While the wireless network performed well and our video test within New Zealand with Zita Joyce was succesful, the international connection was poor and after a brief period of video, we resorted to voice only skype connection to the festival.

Another issue was that we left the headset on the boat ramp so we had to make do with the laptop internal mike which caused some feedback.

When we got to withing reach of the network, we strapped the 2 waka ama together to make a stable platform, with 2 central hulls and 2 ama - effectivley a tri-maran.

We paddled out of the stream near to one of the banks and held on the mud.

All electrical gear was packed in dry bags for the paddling section of the trip and luckily we had no rain.

Performance

Milke Poa opened the performance with a karakia to open the korero accompanied by Jonah Marinovich on Pootataro (konch). This was recorded by De Balie and hopefully streamed back to the festival later. The discussion then began with Julian Priest and Eric Kluitenberg on aspects of the situation of the discussion.

We talked about the contrast between the wireless technical implementation and the mode of transport. We also discussed the experience of http://greenbench.org/project/slowflow and the contrast between the non-connected areas up the Whanganui river in the bush, where no connection is possible (without satellite phones) and the city siutation of the performance.

We commented that being disconnected takes planning, and also a strong intention to do so.

We ended discussing the possibilities for exploring the relationship between waka culture and information technology.

Crew

Many thanks to the crew for paddling in the middle of the night.

Mike Poa

Jonah Marinovich

Don Hunter

Te Wainuiarua Poa

Julian Priest

Sue James

Thanks also to Don for photgraphing, and Zita Joyce for video testing as well as the Electrosmog tech crew.